Bewildering
by I Call Him Fred
Summary: Ron Weasley has a very strange dream which unfortunately involves cross-dressing, no dressing at all, a harem, and a really weird dance party.


Ron Weasley is sitting in a boat. This boat is resting on some calm, beautiful body of water. It looks tropical, the aquamarine blue water and the deep blue of the sky, and a spot of white in the distance. Ron supposes that that spot of white must be an island of paradisiacal variety, all white sand and palm trees, so, with the paddle that he suddenly finds across his knees, he starts to make his way over. It is a gorgeous day, hot, with just a hint of wind, and the water he's dipping his oar in is cool when it splashes over his fingers. The white spot in the distance gets steadily closer. Ron hopes there's lot of palm trees on the island, and maybe a few tropical drinks. It's hot out here, paddling.

Ron paddles. Paddles. Paddles some more. The more he paddles, though, the more he comes to the off-putting conclusion that the white spot isn't hardly big enough to be an island with palm trees and cold tropical drinks. It doesn't even look to be big enough to be an island at all.

Ron squints at it.

Is that...?

No.

It can't be.

He pauses in his paddling. The boat floats on a little, carried by his forward momentum. The sun drums ferociously on his head and bare back. He feels faintly sick from the heat.

"No, no," he mutters to himself, "this is just too weird."

Hagrid is walking serenely across the water towards Ron, arms spread out in a gesture of welcome. He has a huge grin on his bearded face, and is wearing a white nun's habit.

Ron blinks.

Hagrid glides closer, the robe of the habit flowing behind him in some breeze that Ron can't feel.

"Hagrid?" He asks in a croaky voice that cracks up a few octaves.

Hagrid advances. "Get out, my child," he says, "come walk with me."

Ron, astounded, thinks, _why not, this can't get any weirder anyways_, and unfolds himself from the boat, dangling his legs over the side. He is out of the boat before he really realizes what's going on: Hagrid is some cross-dressing version of Jesus Christ, and Ron is walking on water.

_Impossible_, he thinks, and sinks up to his knees in the water.

Hagrid moves ever closer.

"Ron," he calls, "believe in me and you will live."

Ron frowns, and sinks another foot. He's starting to feel a bit concerned.

"You won't sink, Ron, if you believe in me," says Hagrid, and this is enough to make Ron snort quietly to himself, which results in him plummeting through the surface of the water too suddenly to take a breath, but he has time to hear Hagrid say, "Aw, bugger it," in a tone of calm serenity.

Ron is sinking fast, eyes screwed shut, desperately hanging on to the last bit of air left in his lungs. Behind his eyelids, he starts seeing spots. And then, because he can't help himself anymore, Ron opens his mouth and sucks in a deep lungful of water.

He doesn't die.

Instead, the water disappears in his mouth, leaving him full of air and so amazed that his eyes pop open. He flinches, waiting for the sting of the salt water, but it doesn't come. He blinks. He can see perfectly.

This is getting weirder and weirder.

He swims around a little.

He seems to be part fish.

Bizarre.

Ron swims around some more, revelling in the cool water around him, how his body feels powerful as he moves through it. He looks at the fish swimming around him, flitting against his legs, and he laughs delightedly, large bubbles issuing from his mouth. He is still laughing when he twists mid-water and comes face-to-face with Minerva McGonagall. He freezes. Impossibly, when she opens her mouth, he can hear her, loud and clear.

"Mr Weasley," she says, the corners of her mouth twitching even though it is pressed into its usual firm line, "please cover yourself."

Ron is very confused.

"Mr Weasley," she repeats sternly, "please put away your wand."

Ron, bewildered, makes to put his hand in his pocket to assure that his wand really isn't out, and starts terribly when he realizes that he isn't wearing robes or pants or anything at all, really. He can feel himself turning red, the heat crawling up his neck. He casts around for something, anything, to use to cover himself, and when he looks back at McGonagall she isn't McGonagall anymore, she's Hermione, and she's also quite naked. Ron's eyes widen to the size of dinner plates. Hermione smiles at him, a coy little smile that makes him a little bit crazy. He reaches a hand out to touch her face, but she pulls away, infinitely more graceful in the water than he, and turns and swiftly swims away.

Ron feels a little pang of loss (or at least a little pang of _something_) in his chest, seeing her long bare legs flashing at him as they get farther and farther away, and he tries to swim after her but he starts sinking again, his arms and legs feeling like lead as he tries to move them through the water. The air in his throat turns liquid again, the salt burns in his nose, his eyes, his mouth, and he twists in pain.

_I'm finished_, he thinks, head feeling like it's about to explode.

Suddenly he's falling through air now, and smacks down against a large armchair, or, rather, down _through_ a large armchair. He crashes to the floor. The wind is knocked right out of him, and he lies, stunned and gasping, amidst the wreckage of the minister for magic's chair.

But, of course, it isn't the minister sitting behind the desk.

"I say," intones Harry primly, adjusting his monocle, "how unexpected of you to drop in, Mr Weasley."

Ron sits up, utterly astounded.

"Harry?" he says, rubbing his neck, "What's going on?"

Harry frowns severely, eyebrows crunching together above his monocle. He tugs at the sleeves of his robes, and tells Ron sternly,

"That's 'Minister Potter' to you. And you've just broken my favourite armchair, Ronald."

_This is ridiculous_, thinks Ron.

"Come off it, Harry," he says, a bit irritably.

"I said," continues Harry in a dangerously quiet voice, "to call me 'Minister Potter'."

Ron is about to say, "And why should I?" but the portrait behind Harry swings forward and catches the back of Harry's head, and Harry slumps forward, unconscious, to his desk, his monocle popping out of his eye socket and shattering beside him.

Ginny hops down from the portrait hole. She looks at Harry with thinly veiled disgust, thumps him one over the head with a dictionary (muttering "One for luck," under her breath), and helps Ron out of the pile of splinters and upholstery that was formerly a chair.

"Don't mind him," she says comfortingly, "he's been one big moron ever since the Moroccan minister sent him a harem for Christmas."

Ron's mouth moves silently around the words "a harem" in disbelief.

"Bloody hell," exclaims Ginny in exasperation as the portrait bursts open again, "here they are."

And, indeed, the people streaming into the room are all dressed in veils and billowy harem pants with bells around their ankles, and are all gyrating and bumping around the room, knocking over the rest of Harry's furniture and trampling it underfoot. Ron is buffeted about the room, catching various disturbing glimpses of the harem.

There, standing on the desk, not inches from Harry's face, is Albus Dumbledore, swinging his long silver hair and thrusting his hips around in a way that can't be healthy or safe for a man of his age. Over there, in the corner, Sirius Black is tearing off his veil and the veil of one Remus Lupin, and dragging Lupin's mouth to his own and kissing him thoroughly. There, to Ron's left, is Luna Lovegood doing the foxtrot with some beast that looks to be a Crumple-Horned Snorkack.

Ron is bewildered, and is staggering about looking for the door when he looks behind him and sees his mother bearing down on him, looking no less ferocious than Buckbeak if you'd told him he was only a smelly, overgrown chicken. Ron gulps, picks up the pace of his escape attempt, and stumbles into Hagrid, who's still in his nun outfit and spreads his arms wide, rumbling in a voice so deep it rattles Ron's teeth in his head,

"Ronnnnnnn..."

The white habit is engulfing him, smothering, he can't breathe, _help, help_, he thinks, _I can't_-

And he's thrashing about and trying to escape and the dream pops around him, he's awake and tangled in the bed sheets like a mummy, his pillow over his face, and Harry, in the bed beside him in his orange room at the Burrow, is telling him to shut it and quit being such a nutter.

Ron, heart pounding and breathing like he's just won the Quidditch World Cup, gasps, "Yes, Minister Potter," and, ignoring Harry's startled and bewildered look from the other bed, untangles himself from his sheets and staggers off down the hall to the loo to get himself some water.


End file.
